Anandech analyzes why no 3G

[cmaier]

http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3036

To summarize, they confirmed that HSDPA would require more room (they don't really quantify it, but they show pictures so you can judge for yourself) and extremely affect battery life if you have a lot of traffic. (Around 25% worse than using EDGE, and roughly 40% worse than wi-fi). When you are mostly idle, the effects are minimal.

The weird thing is that enabling 3G cuts the blackjack's talk time in half!

All of this assumes an implementation similar to the blackjack. Right now there are only a very limited number of chipset options, so that's probably a reasonable assumption.

So, I guess if the real engineering tradeoff was double the physical volume and the same talk time, or slightly more volume and half the talk time to get HSDPA, I'm happy with Apple's choice.

I know there are some new chipsets coming on line in the next few months, however, so hopefully they improve things enough where it makes sense to shove 3G into the next iteration of the phone, and soon.

[mikec]

Originally Posted by cmaier

http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3036

To summarize, they confirmed that HSDPA would require more room (they don't really quantify it, but they show pictures so you can judge for yourself) and extremely affect battery life if you have a lot of traffic. (Around 25% worse than using EDGE, and roughly 40% worse than wi-fi). When you are mostly idle, the effects are minimal.

The weird thing is that enabling 3G cuts the blackjack's talk time in half!

All of this assumes an implementation similar to the blackjack. Right now there are only a very limited number of chipset options, so that's probably a reasonable assumption.

So, I guess if the real engineering tradeoff was double the physical volume and the same talk time, or slightly more volume and half the talk time to get HSDPA, I'm happy with Apple's choice.

I know there are some new chipsets coming on line in the next few months, however, so hopefully they improve things enough where it makes sense to shove 3G into the next iteration of the phone, and soon.

Blackjack has a 1200 mAh battery, but same EDGE talktime as iPhone?

Maybe the battery isn't as much as we think.

I bet most people would want 3G...they could just replace the battery....oh wait, can't do that on the iPhone.

Opps.

[braj]

I think the biggest problem from my perspective is Safari has some issues with mobile sites. If it didn't, you could just use these low-bandwidth sites when on Edge and the full sites when on wifi (if your ego will let you 'go ghetto'). Of course mobile sites could be updated with Apple's css suggestions, but that would also possibly break them for a host of other handsets.

Otherwise it makes sense to have no 3G, it's a tradeoff either way. If it had EDGE and no wifi then that would be a huge issue.

[cmaier]

That screen on the iphone takes up a lot more power than blackjack's screen. As does the CPU.

What problems does safari have with mobile sites? (other than when those sites put in code to redirect to the full-blown sites?) I regularly use mobile sites (nytimes, fandango, mlb) without problem. I'm not disbelieving you - I just hadn't heard about any problems other than some sites intentionally redirecting iphone visitors to their full-blown site (which is the fault of the site, not of safari, of course).

As for supporting iphone and wap browsers with a mobile site, that's pretty trivial as it is simple to detect iphone and serve up a different page (i do that now with two of my own sites).

[braj]

I had heard that many sites didn't format correctly, but if they appear fine then maybe this is a limited issue.

[cmaier]

If you run across it again let me know and I'll try them. So far, however, so good. The only problem I've ever run into is that sometimes the default zoom level isn't quite right, but the formatting has always been fine.

[braj]

Originally Posted by cmaier

If you run across it again let me know and I'll try them. So far, however, so good. The only problem I've ever run into is that sometimes the default zoom level isn't quite right, but the formatting has always been fine.

I think that was the issue, that the default zoom would show the text way too small,or something, and when you pinched it wouldn't display properly. I don't have an iPhone so I can't say. But it would be better if the zoom was optimized when first launched.

[cmaier]

Ah. Zoom seems to do a pretty good job. I have had a few where I've preferred to zoom in, but I haven't seen any where zooming caused it to display improperly.

[braj]

Originally Posted by cmaier

Ah. Zoom seems to do a pretty good job. I have had a few where I've preferred to zoom in, but I haven't seen any where zooming caused it to display improperly.

It wraps nicely after zooming?

[cmaier]

Well, first it doesn't wrap. Zoom zooms, like a magnifying glass.

But in the cases I've had to zoom it's been because there is too much whitespace on the right side, so I zoom until the text fills the width of the screen. So the lack of wrapping is moot.

And, again, I've rarely had to zoom.

An example is wap.mlb.com. By default, the text goes about 60% of the way from the left edge. The rest (to the right) is whitespace. It's quite readable, but if I'm feeling a little eye fatigued i sometimes like to zoom. The reason it picks the "wrong" zoom level, it looks like, is the page has a graphic/logo at the top which appears to be too wide (and is mostly solid blue). So safari zooms to fit the width of that graphic, and the text is mostly on the left.

I can zoom in and make the text pretty huge while just filling the width of the screen (nothing needs to wrap).

Other sites, like mobile.nytimes.com, come up (in my opinion) perfectly, with the text filling the screen, because the logo (usually the widest element) is the same width as the text. Same thing with mobile.fandango.com, google calendar (which defaults to either a mobile version or an iphone specific version when you go there), etc.

Like I said, there could be sites out there that are problematic, but based on my experience it's a complete non-issue.